Empire of the Sun

J. G. Ballard

Introduced by William BoydIllustrated by Tim Laing

The harrowing story of a British boy’s four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War, based on the author’s own wartime experiences. The first illustrated edition, featuring images by award-winning artist Tim Laing.

Empire of the Sun

In the author’s own words, Empire of the Sun ‘draws on my experiences in Shanghai … and in Lunghua C.A.C. [Civilian Assembly Centre] where I was interned from 1942–5’. The protagonist, Jim, takes Ballard’s first name and, like the author, is born in Shanghai to British parents. Aged only 11 when he is separated from his family during the Japanese takeover, he cycles through the Shanghai streets in search of his parents, scavenging food and sleeping in the beds of vanished families. While roaming the creeks and waste tips of Nantao, he finds a dubious guardian in Basie, a shrewd American hustler, but convinced that his parents are in a prison camp, his only hope lies in surrender to the Japanese, and four brutal years in a civilian internment camp.

‘A remarkable journey into the mind of a growing boy’
The Sunday Times

Superbly introduced by the celebrated novelist William Boyd, Empire of the Sun illuminates Ballard’s entire body of work, revealing the roots of his nightmarish fiction (wrecked planes, empty swimming pools and tortured physicians) and his obsession with the effects of alienation and deprivation. As Boyd notes, it is Ballard’s ‘entrancing poetry’ that transmutes his own childhood trauma into something extraordinary, a stark world in which terror and beauty are enmeshed.

‘Nothing is as secure as we like to think it is’
J. G. Ballard

Production Details

Three-quarter bound in cloth with a Modigliani paper front board

Set in Minion with Roos Initials display

304 pages

Title page spread and 8 black & white integrated illustrations

1 map

Slipcase

9½″ x 6¼″

About J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China. At 12 years old
he was interred, along with his family, in a civilian prison camp during the
Japanese occupation, an experience he would later recount in Empire
of the Sun (1984). Following the camp’s liberation, Ballard returned to
England in 1946 where, after a brief foray into medicine, he started his prolific
writing career, which included both fiction (novels and short stories)
and non-fiction. His first novel, The Wind From Nowhere, was published
in 1961. Ballard’s apocalyptic visions combined with a dark and surrealist
style make him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Beside several collections of short stories, notably Vermilion Sands
(1971), Ballard’s novels include The Drowned World (1962), Crash (1973),
High Rise (1975), Cocaine Nights (1996) and Millennium People (2003). He died in 2009.

About William Boyd

William Boyd is a novelist and short-story writer. Born in Accra,
Ghana, he was educated in Scotland and attended the universities of Nice,
Glasgow and Jesus College, Oxford. His work has been published around
the world and translated into over 30 languages. He is the author of
14 novels, including A Good Man in Africa (1981; winner of the
Whitbread Literary Award and the Somerset Maugham Award), An Ice
Cream War (1982, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted
for the Booker prize), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean
Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year). Boyd
is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l’Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres.

About Tim Laing

Tim Laing is a freelance illustrator who studied at Brighton University,
where he developed his interest in working from books and short stories.
He has since been commissioned by The New York Times and Wallpaper
magazine, among others. For The Folio Society he has illustrated Thomas
Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark (2009), a trilogy of novels by John le Carré
(2009) and Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March (2015).

Reviews

"A well produced book, as always with Folio Society editions, let down by poor illustrations that detract from the text, rather than illuminate it. It's as if the illustrator has read a brief synopsis ..." [read more]

"A well produced book, as always with Folio Society editions, let down by poor illustrations that detract from the text, rather than illuminate it. It's as if the illustrator has read a brief synopsis of Ballard's novel, dipped into Spielberg's film of the book, and proceeded to produce the small number of soot and whitewash images without giving a lot of thought as to the purpose they should serve in the text. Very disappointed!" [hide full review]